APPLETON, Wis. (WFRV) – In downtown Appleton, Harry Houdini has captured attention for over a century.
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Although he was born in Budapest, Hungary, he and his family immigrated and lived in Appleton for about four years, which Dustin Mack, the Executive Director at the History Museum at The Castle, says left a mark on him.
“Houdini has fond memories of Appleton and felt safe and stable here,” Mack said.
That history is preserved inside the history museum at the castle, home to one of the largest Houdini exhibits in the country. The exhibit is filled with stories, pictures and artifacts of the man who did what no one else could.
“Houdini was always pushing the envelope on the impossible,” Mack said.
After running away to join the circus, he began mastering his craft, leading to the Houdini we know today.
“He was always looking for ways to make himself the spectacle, suspended from cranes, jumping off bridges,” Mack said.
But with technology in its infancy, Houdini was an early marketing genius.
“He was a really good ambassador and self-promoter; he was able to challenge local police officers from town to town to lock him up in their best handcuffs,” Mack said.
These unbelievable acts led people to flock to see the unbelievable.
“Newspapers would cover this escape from the local police, and that was a way to sell tickets for his shows,” Mack said.
But despite doing the impossible, he inspired people in the early 1900s about what was possible.
“He always came out on top, so Americans saw this, and they were attracted to magic and escapes, but it was the idea of what is possible,” Mack said.
And he inspired people then and now. One Appleton magician looked up to him since he was little. When he started his magic career, he used his hero as his stage name. ‘Ron Dini’ echoed the idea that he resonates with people.
“It’s the whole aura of us relating to him. There’s so much stuff that goes on in the world today that people want to get away from and escape, and back then, too,” RonDini said. “No matter where they came from, they could escape the barriers that society put on them.”
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And Houdini’s legacy still gives us hope 100 years later.
“And that has stayed with us as the decades passed since his death, that Houdini conquered all,” Mack said.
